Vukovar: Six Years Later

DEAD WARRIORS MISLAID IN POLITICAL HAZE

In the past few days in Belgrade, the news that 10 thousand
Serb warriors were killed in the combats for Vukovar came as a
bombshell. This is the topic which was passed over in silence
in the past several years. The citizens are consternate, and
the "celebrated", nowadays mostly retired generals -
commanders of the Vukovar operation, deny this datum. Well
informed military experts, however, say that the datum
declared by general Antun Tus should not be disregarded.

AIM Belgrade, 23 November, 1997

Six years ago, on 18 November, units of the army of
the "deceased" Yugoslavia, territorial defence, paramilitary
and other Serb professional patriots, along with their
commanders and band-leaders, triumphantly marched into what
was left of Vukovar, after having systematically shattered it
for 86 days from more than a thousand artillery barrels.
Having finally crushed the resistance of "Croat defenders",
the victors were given medals and promotions in Belgrade (57
of them). Nobody, either at the time or later, indeed to this
very day, nobody except those whose families were directly
affected by the Vukovar tragedy, asked what was the price of
this "Vukovar victory"?

And then suddenly, in the beginning of November this
year, Novi list, daily from Rijeka, carried the statement of
retired general of Croatian Army who had until the eve of the
war been the commander of air-force and antiaircraft defence
of the army of former Yugoslavia, Antun Tus, which somewhat
agitated the calm of the public opinion in Serbia. According
to the interpretation of the media, general Tus claims that in
the attack on Vukovar, the Serb party engaged all 40 thousand
of its combatants of different "profile" (regular army
servicemen, reserve forces, members of territorial defence,
volunteers), while along the lines of Croatian defence there
were about 2,500 warriors; that the attackers in Vukovar
operation "lost 10 thousand soldiers, 600 armoured vehicles
and 23 airplanes", and that among the ranks of the defenders
"only" 1,850 warriors were killed and that another 2,000
disappeared.

Those who felt called to account welcomed Tus with a
barrage of objections. For example, retired general Andrija
Biorcevic, former commander of Novi Sad corps and commander of
the North operation force in Vukovar operation, on the whole
page of Belgrade Dnevni telegraf on 14 November, replied to
Tus that he was not speaking the truth: "What Antun Tus is
saying are notorious lies. He had better count his victims...
At the time Tus was still loyal to the Yugoslav People's
Army...". In fact, he was not, Tus was already the head of the
general staff of the Croatian Army. Biorcevic also claims:
"All together, I do not think there was more than 1,500 killed
on our side".

Milan Milivojevic, retired colonel, also one of the
commanders in combats for Vukovar, in the same newspaper on
the same day, says: "If what Tus declared is true, then he
should be accused of genocide. According to my data, 300
soldiers were killed at the most, and the rest to 10 thousand
must have been civilians killed by the Croats...". He also
claims that the Croats did not destroy more than ten armoured
vehicles, and that as concerning shooting down airplanes "it
is just another cock-and-bull story, except for one above
Slavonski brod".

The journalist of Dnevni telegraf also asked the
information service of the General Staff of the Army of
Yugoslavia for a comment, but, he claims, nobody responded
over there. However, the known military political commentator
from Belgrade, close to the General Staff, Miroslav Lazanski,
presents the following arguments in Belgrade Vecernje novosti
of 14 November: during the Vukovar operation "on the side of
JNA, territorial defence and units of volunteers, exactly
1,103 members were killed"; "110 armoured vehicles were lost";
"two combat planes were shot down", and "another one fell due
to technical failure". "These are correct data", Lazanski
writes, "everything else is propaganda...", along with the
comment that allegations of general Tus "are ridiculous and
surprising".

Nevertheless, perhaps in this case everything is not
necessarily propaganda. Apart from mostly unfounded
disqualifications and abusive language fired at general Tus in
the beginning of the war after he had been retired in Belgrade
and in Zagreb offered the post of the general in command -
Antun Tus was both here and there an esteemed "officer and
gentleman"; both here and there he was an authority in
military science who knew equally well the circumstances on
both sides engaged in the bloody feud and at the time of
Vukovar calamity. Although one of the founders of the Croatian
Army, the very minute this army started leaving dishonourable
traces behind it, the general said good-bye both to it and its
commander-in-chief, Franjo Tudjman. There is, therefore, no
serious reason which would induce this man to use untruths.

His evaluation of losses at Vukovar was approved by
two retired generals in Serbia, honourable men who were highly
esteemed in the former military hierarchy and who are still
believed to be respectable military analysts, although they
are not willing to face the public not even on this occasion.
Their logic starts from the principle of classic warfare
according to which losses of the attacker are at least three
times greater than those of the defenders: "So, if, including
the disappeared mentioned by Tus, the Croats lost between
three and four thousand soldiers, the calculus is very
simple". As an illustration they add the following facts:
"even a general, commander of Novi Sad corps before Biorcevic,
Mladen Bratic was killed" in the operation; "if 20 men were
put out of action just from the rear battalion of Novi Sad
corps, and the battalion was based on this side of the Danube,
in Karadjordjevo, we can only imagine what was happening in
the first combat lines"; "if from a single comparatively small
municipality, Backi Brestovac, according to our sources, 35
members of the territory defence were killed...".

Contrary to Croatia where they speak of their
casualties (not only in Vukovar) in the context of political
marketing, in this "warring party", for political reasons
again, the dead in one's own ranks are passed over in silence.
If from time to time the public is informed about some of
them, it is extremely curtly and in general. Nevertheless, it
is possible to discern a significant fact here and there even
from such statements.

For example, general Zvonko Jurjevic, commander of the
air-force and anti-aircraft defence of the JNA during the war
in Slovenia and Croatia (one of the most tragic figures in
this war turmoil: being a Croat the official Zagreb rejected
him as a "traitor", and on the same grounds, Belgrade became
suspicious about his loyalty), immediately after the fall of
Vukovar gave a statement to a reporter of the Croatian army
weekly called Narodna armija: "When speaking of casualties, I
must say that they are often wrongly interpreted, exaggerated.
The losses in this period were far below the average known to
the world". Of course they were "below the average" when the
main force of "Croatian anti-aircraft defence" at that moment
consisted of the "fleet" of agricultural air-force which was
destroyed at its base airport in Osijek. At the time, Jurjevic
said that "60 per cent of the so far lost combat airplanes are
the 'seagull' and 'hawk' type airplanes which were at the time
gradually withdrawn from use. It is characteristic for the
air-force that 68 per cent of the total losses were from among
the officers, while 32 per cent were soldiers... From the
total number of losses among the officers and non-commissioned
officers, 50 per cent were pilots of all ranks, from an
assistant corps commander, commander of the regiment, to the
youngest pilots..."

Had only two to three aircrafts from the combat fleet
of the attackers above Vukovar been shot down (and probably on
the entire Croatian front) as Tus's opponents in Belgrade
claim, Jurjevic's comment would have made no sense at all.

For Mile Mrksic, retired general and one from the list
of the indicted of the Hague Tribunal, and in Vukovar
operation commander of the operation group called "South" -
Vukovar was (also dictated to the reporter of the weekly
Narodna armija) "the hardest and the best fortified Ustashe
fortress"; while general Veljko Kadijevic proclaimed Vukovar
defence to be "the backbone of Croatian army". This stressed
significance of firmness of defence of Vukovar might be an
attempt to conceal losses which are persistently hidden from
the public.

At the square in front of the sports' centre in Novi
Sad, Nenad Canak, leader of the League of Social Democrats of
Voivodina (himself an unwilling eye-witness of Vukovar
tragedy) spoke on 18 November this year on the occasion of
building of a monument to all the victims of this war
operation: a flying bird made of cannon and mortar shells
fallen on Vukovar, work of Nikola Simijanovic, who was also
mobilized by force. The monument warns and reminds that "a lot
of young men from Voivodina were killed" over there, he said.